Many more teens seem to be having serious panic attacks

[Ihaveyourback]

On a daily basis in dd's class (15) she has around four children a day having to leave mid lesson due to panic attacks at some point in the day. At least four of her friends are self harming, and three have full blown anorexia.
DD is finding it very stressful and is getting quite scared, and god only knows how the children are coping themselves. Before it was about one or two a month, now every day someone is in difficulties.

My younger dd (12) is also experiencing something similar in her year - eating disorder, anorexia that needed hospitalisation and anxiety. It is worse in my older dd's year but I would say a quarter of 12 year olds in my dd's year and friends have significant MH issues.

Please can you tell me what you are experiencing in your schools? Are you noticing a massive upward trend? I am assuming it is the pandemic, exams combining but I could be wrong, my eldest dd is now saying she doesn't want to go to school, she is feeling overwhelmed.

I am quite frankly horrified at how many children are in a really bad state. Most seem to having some kind of counselling, which does not appear to be working at all for them.

If you are going through this, or understand this in a more informed way I would be grateful for your thoughts. Or if your child is not experiencing anything like this and your school seems fine. I am wondering if it is the school environment, their age or the pandemic.

We had so much more freedom, both of thought, movement and expression. We could leave the grounds of school (it also wasn't surrounded by an 8 ft fence), uniform wasn't so strictly enforced. Every tiny infraction in my kids school is enforced with a strict consequence. It is more strict than a prison, its so sad.

This is sad to read but I don't think it's the norm in secondary.

DD yr11 says a couple of girls go to pastoral for their anxiety but the vast majority are getting on with life.

I think most teens roll with the punches but for those who can't, it can be devastating.

we have children leaving the classroom with panic attacks on a daily basis before lockdown. Some children are just prone to them

Why?

I went to a really horrible violet girls school, it was huge, I had so many friends not one ever had a panic attack. Not one had a MH problem.

It is entirely the case that even under a great deal of pressure - this never happened. I am so worried. The drastic decline of our children's mental health is rarely even deemed important enough to make it onto the headlines. I am fuming sitting here reading about a road near stonehenge?!

What is going on. This is happening widely across both state and private school settings.

Why?

Expectations.
Expectations of them and their outcomes.

When I was in school (a sink comprehensive- ~10% got 5 A-Cs at GCSE) you went to school, you sat in a classroom and behaved (yeah- they'd have done the silence, hands up, anyone speaks you all troop into the corridor and practise coming in silently, putting your hands up as @NaturesEnd mentioned. We still had corporal punishment until Y9). You sat exams at the end of Y11, it was down to you if you prepared for them, you either passed or failed, then left or went to 6th form (at least 50% just left, and got jobs or got married and had children). There was no comeback, no pressure on the school or the teachers for anyone to pass, no performance tables in those days. No national curriculum even.

One girl in the whole school (1000+) had ED, none in my year. "Self harming" meant suicide attempt in those days, and those didn't happen either, the only case I know was a boy who'd had a life-changing diagnosis at 16.
It was in an area of severe poverty, but even though most ex-pupils didn't have qualifications, the vast majority went on to productive jobs or college that led to jobs later.

Since then, performance tables have been introduced, HTs and teachers are held responsible (by pupils, parents and govt) if children don't get 5A*-C GCSEs, no-one values vocational jobs or training, it's all about A levels and University, and everyone has to stay in education until 18, so there's enormous pressure to get onto the best 6th form courses, at all levels of ability. Then at 6th form, they have to work non-stop to get the best university places.
Pupils have to be constantly seen to be making progress, they have to work hard from the moment they begin Y7, there is no let up, they are assessed regularly, and it's followed up when things are on the slide, but the onus has shifted from the pupil to the teacher. It has become the teachers' responsibility to get children through their exams, and consequently schools have become places of intense pressure- if X % don't get their target grade (which is essentially determined by how good/crap their primary school was or how much the primary cheated on KS2 tests) teachers lose pay. If your school's results go down, parents slag you off all over SM, and pull their children out, you lose funding, have to cut staff, and amazingly can't improve results Never mind the ability of that cohort of children...

Obviously, different areas have different issues in their schools, and many schools are doing the job of society/ social services in clothing and feeding children, providing and/or washing their uniforms, supporting parents apply for jobs/benefits/support, doing safe and well checks on children they haven't seen in school, etc.

Universally there are huge expectations upon schools to magically produce fully-functioning, fully qualified, all singing and dancing, well adjusted adults, on really quite stringent budgets.

But expectations of everything have changed since the 70s/80s in our society. Everyone expects to own a home, a car, to have foreign holidays, a wardrobe full of clothing for every occasion, satellite television, a high-end smartphone, a fridge full of copious amounts of tempting and delicious food, to go out as much as they like, to restaurants, the cinema, theatre, bars, coffee shops, etc etc etc.

No-one wants a hard life, with few comforts or pleasures, relentless struggle, no choices or opportunities. Why would they?

School culture, and tik tok, have a huge amount to answer for.

Young minds living in a toxic world are vulnerable to social contagion.

Because the world we live in is toxic and the only people who get ahead in life are the psychopathic bullies like Boris and Trump.
I think people were just in denial about how shit the world is before and now we’re constantly bombarded with it, and contrasting images of rich people having no responsibilities and just enjoying being rich.

You can be the highest achieving student in your entire year and you can finish university with a first class honours in a science degree and still only qualify for a minimum wage job.
Because the competition is so high for the few trainee positions which are available. (Despite the fact there is a huge shortage of professionals in this industry but no one seems to care about that).

And there is a big problem with glorification of self harm and mental health issues on social media, I have seen truly disturbing things on tiktok.

Like so many things, I think this is one where lockdown has exacerbated pre-existing issues - this time with our education system.

DD is in her mid 20s and when she was your DC’s age severe MH problems were rampant at her school. In particular, I can think of three girls she was at school with who underwent years and years of treatment for anorexia and are only coming out the other side now.

Some schools put such an immeasurable amount of pressure on pupils without the support to back it up. DD’s school days were just at the advent of social media, but that certainly had a part to play too (lots of online bullying).

Perhaps DD’s school was a particularly toxic environment (she didn’t stay their for her who secondary schooling) but it wasn’t so unusual as friends at other schools saw similar issues.

My dd improved over lockdown and was much happier. Her primary is quite pressured (outstanding Ofsted in a deprived area). I think there are elements of toxic, social contagion in the mild anxiety DD suffers from. Her issues appear to stem from an NSPCC school talk which introduced the ideas of problems and Childline. DD who is very theatrical and loves a bit of attention was allowed to call Childline and talk to them at school. The school had absolutely no idea of the identity, training, qualifications or experience of the person on the other end of the line. This person acted highly inappropriately with her and told her she was suffering from anxiety and stress etc. They planted ideas in her head that previously were completely unknown to her and gave her a diagnosis and labels she completely believed in to her detriment. A classroom assistant also decided at the same time to 'nurture' DD. A headstrong, smart girl that hates maths was allowed to leave lessons every time she got upset. She spent more and more time with an inexperienced assistant who was telling her, among other things, that she 'needed a therapist'. Anxiety meltdowns were getting DD exactly what she wanted, the opportunity to stop working and get attention, coupled with adults telling her she had something wrong with her. She fell further and further behind in maths increasing her dislike and worry around lessons.

NSPCC like all big charities, it is run like a business. Childline, although it's mainly staffed by volunteers brings in large amounts of funding for them and their annual reports identify how they want to increase calls. There are concerns raised by staff on vetting and training of people on calls. I do think that there is money to be made from the worried well and that people are exploiting this.

I don't want to undermine other people's experiences of severe mental health issues for themselves and their children. But I do wonder that for some impressionable children they are being moulded and influenced by societal messages.

My dad works in a secondary and would say this has been going on for years. Its certainly not a lockdown phenomenon.

I used to have panic attacks in school, I would never ever have told anyone. Have since found out a couple of my friends did too. But we just didnt speak about it, I would never ever have gone into my parents room and told them. Not even sure I would have known it as a panic attack. Fair amount of eating disorders too. It has become significantly more socially acceptable to admit to mental health problems in recent years

I alsp agree eith a PP there can be ana element of playing up to the diagnosis. I know as soon as I told friends at university about my pajic attacks they became much more frequent, because I wasnt suppressing or hiding them as i had been at school. Before I could focus and pull myself out of the spiral (not always), but after Id told people I didnt. Or I would say I was having a panic attack before it got to full scale panic attack. People start sqying anxiety when they are normally anxious

Its also a well known phenomenom that mental health issues are 'catching' amongst teenagers. There have been reporta of whole schools developing tourettes, friendship groups developing anorexia.

Mental health problems are multifactorial. I think teenagers are under massive pressures from social media, influencers, even sites like tumblr , to be or act a certain way. The pressure teenagers are under to live the perfect life is immense.

Youve got 1000s of peoples opinions these days at the click of a button. Youve got a cancel culture where if celebrities or influencers fuck up they get a barrage of abuse and their careers ended. You can see into everyones airburshed life, you can see into lives you never would have seen in the past.

Youve got pressure to be thin, but also have a big bum, be eco-friendly, be kind, dont be racist/sexist/transphobic/homophobic, eat healthily, eat vegan, be fashionable, get good grades, have lots of friends, go travelling, have perfect hair/make-up/nails, study perfectly. Youve also got the pressure of all the above but also the fact that everyone can see it, and your expected to show it otherwise its assumed you dont have it. Youve got people shouting their opinions at you all the fucking time

People on the internet lie to make out they have a perfect life and teenagers absorb all of this. On MN the famous feeds 100 chicken with a massive salad, change my bedding 5x a day. There is insane amounts of pressure on teenagers these days. I dont think you can say that a 6 month lockdown is the cause of a mental health crisis in children when theyve got all the above going on

The pandemic may have highlighted the above, given children the opportunity to see people doing the pandemic perfectly. Doing perfect tiktok dances in their perfect loungewear, going on lockdown diets etc. But its not the lone cause

I think social media and the internet is the change, and as pointed out earlier, almost any aspect of life is 24/7.

We just know about it more. People are less inclined to hide it.

In my private school class GCSEs one girl was self harming seriously, another was bullemic, most the girls regularly skipped meals, drugs were endemic, at least one attempted suicide and the most popular girl in school had a mental breakdown after a prolonged period of ill health. who knows how many people the reverend was counselling, but eventually you realised it was a lot. That was normal. Mostly it was hushed up and never spoken off.

It was the same when i transferred to state.

Just noone talked about it.

Her issues appear to stem from an NSPCC school talk which introduced the ideas of problems and Childline. DD who is very theatrical and loves a bit of attention was allowed to call Childline and talk to them at school. The school had absolutely no idea of the identity, training, qualifications or experience of the person on the other end of the line. This person acted highly inappropriately with her and told her she was suffering from anxiety and stress etc. They planted ideas in her head that previously were completely unknown to her and gave her a diagnosis and labels she completely believed in to her detriment.

So much this.

There’s a fine line between making it ok to talk openly about things, and inadvertently creating ‘a market’ by pathologising normal life experience and undermining children’s sense of their own innate resilience.

Ds is fine but it’s hard to get a picture as he doesn’t really talk about others in his class. His friends seem happy when I fleetingly meet them (he usually goes out)

I do wonder if SM impacts in a way that choosing Instagram can have a bigger effect

Anxiety and mental health issues are Hugely linked to mobile phones and social media. The social media especially is tied to young people's self esteem and self worth. They often feel like they are in full time competition with their peers and have massive inferiority complexes about stuff that isn't even real. After all, nobodies life is as perfect as it appears but that is literally what influences try to portray. Add in a pandemic and a few lock downs, a constant high alert for an invisible enemy (corona) and it's no surprise

Self harming is cool now. It's a way to get attention. In my daughters school you aren't even mentally unwell until you have had a proper suicide attempt and are audibly vomiting at lunch time if you are a girl or self medicating with extreme porn and weed if you are a boy. The invisible kids that are being overlooked due to the drama caused by the loud kids are all claiming to be trans and non binary and gay and triggered.

My daughter hates it. Never a lesson goes by without learning sport being called in and despite her completing her work she sits twisting her thumbs for most of the lesson as it's constantly stopping and starting.

The modern world has become far too much for them. Social media is also ruining their mental health. I dont know what the answer is but when my relatives kids are around I try to take them out into the wild as much as I can.

Social media.

Watch The Social Dilemma on Netflix.

It's designed to make our children addicted ,.it isolates them from each other, it erodes their self-esteem and harms their mental health.

And it's all been compounded by lockdowns.

That sounds very full on HotPatootie are you in a city or elsewhere? (I’m in London just wondering)

I am glad Ds doesn’t do Instagram. I think the visual SM can be harder on mh. He just uses WA mainly to chat to friends.

I would actually say things have got better in our school. We have always had students who suffer from anxiety and find life overwhelming, but I think the majority are just so relieved to be back with their friends and back to some kind of 'normal' that they are coping better than before lockdown.

I guess every school/individual is different and it's difficult to generalise.

I would like to say thank you to everyone that is contributing to the thread, and for sharing. I am afraid it is a minefield. We are rural by the way, and this is not a place of pressure or danger at all.

During the lockdown many seemed to cope fine, but it seems to be harder now they are back in school. I am not sure why.

In my experience, my DD coped better in the first lockdown because she was out of school, away from the pressures of exams, friends, competitiveness, social media (no-one was doing anything).

Being in lockdown and still going to school seems to be really hard. Life is generally crap, and there is no hope for the future, nothing to look forward to. Young people know they've been shafted.

Ds was the opposite found lockdown harder than now. He’s back to normal and happy. He lagged a fair bit at end of last term.

fred what are the age of the children? And do you think it might be going in, you may not know about it. I say this because lots of my dd's friends are in the full throes of this, and I see the parents and they think everything is fine. The girls have just got very very good at hiding it. Cutting in places that can't be seen, wearing oversized clothes to hide weight loss, don't want to share any of it. I would be very surprised if you were talking about exam aged dc this year.

**on